I'm Melissa! I'm a 32 y.o. re-employed (9 mo unemployed) wife/mother/fur baby lover who was forced into the hounding world by my genetic "cheap make Lincoln scream" dna link and the need to stretch my very few dollars as far as possible. I also have an addictive personality which is why I choose not to drink/smoke but instead go in cycles of being obsessed with different things in life ranging from shoes, cars, working out, dieting, and now hounding.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

I had decided a few weeks ago that I wanted in on the $10 rebate from Coinstar you could get for simply putting $40 in change in one of their machines. I read the websitecoinstar in detail outlining this deal. Now not every had used this machine before I wasn't exactly sure how they worked so once I got to the machine I did the short tutorial and read all the signs on the machine. The one sign taped to the machine said that you have to bring the receipt to the service desk. Knowing I had to choose an ecert or gift cert I was a little confused by that but thought that maybe that was just how this store worked with their coinstar machine. I went ahead and started looking through the choices for gift certs and when I couldn't decide I just figured I would put my money in and get it counted. I was over my $40 mark by just 76 cents. I had to work hard to get that $40, the last week I has $9 short and wound up having to buy $6 worth of change because prior to getting to the machine I didn't realize it took dollars as well.

Part of the advertising for this actually says "TRY" so I'm thinking this Coinstar trying to get new customers to use their machines. Of course, I'm looking for directions at the machine to get the rebate and all I remember was the website saying that I needed to keep the bottom part of the receipt to get the extra $10. My coins got counted and now I'm looking through my options and each one just wasn't that appealing to me. Of course I hit the back button to go back to the first screen that had different gift cert options than I was looking at and the next thing I know it's printing out a receipt. Umm okay.. so I go to the customer service desk and the lady hands me $37.16 Coinstar had taken my 8.9 cents on each dollar even though I didn't chose the cash option!!

The customer service lady said she could print a duplicate receipt for me, but this receipt only shows the $37 so I'm asking how I get my rebate. Of course they know nothing of this so I ask if I could get a copy of the receipt that came from the Coinstar machine. Sure, no problem.. so they walk me over to a copy machine which I had to pay the 10 cents for one copy of my receipt.. okay whatever.

I come home, find Coinstar's phone number so I can call them and get this worked out. The man I spoke to basically said "it's your fault you didn't select and it will time out" umm what? So I'm out my $3.63 plus the rebate huh? Basically yes.. so he suggests that I take the money some where else and get $40 in change and start again! Umm yeah you know how long it took me to get that $40 in change together? A long time, and I live in Chicago, this deal ends tomorrow and we're in the middle of negative degree windchills and snow! Yeah like I want to go back out in this weather, inconvenience the store for them to give me $40 in change, and start the process all over again. This is totally nuts.. So finally he puts me on hold to "talk to his supervisor" and comes back and gives me the same smoke so I said "okay so you are telling me I have to take time out of my day to lose even more money to complete this transaction because now I have to come up with another $4 in order to get the $10, how is this worth it??" and he hung up on me!!

Sorry this was not worth it to me.. I'm out my $3 and I'll never use their machines again.

UGH! Those machines are bad news! I had a very similar experience YEARS ago when those first came out. I don't remember the deets of my deal, but I do remember vowing to never touch one of those machines again!!

I take my change to Chase bank. They turn it into cash for free. Although an extra $10 would be nice, it's not worth the hassle :-)

Coinstar is very tricky! I've disliked them from the very beginning which is why I did not snatch up this deal. I am so sorry you also had a bad encounter but glad you shared your story so other's become aware.

***update*** considering I only have a cell phone in the house and refuse to burn anymore cell minutes just to get hung up on I emailed their customer service early this morning and actually linked my blog/story to the email. I didn't feel like retyping/copy pasting and I wanted them to be able to see the comments I'm getting in return to this experience I had.

I worked in marketing research for years and know that when a customer who has a good experience will only tell 3 family/friends but a person with a bad experience will tell 9. With those odds in this economy, they need to know I got a bum deal and that I'm not happy about it.

OMG what a cheap TWAT you are. I will laugh for a week knowing that you lost out while trying to get something for nothing…then blogged about it! LOLooser Go save a puppy or something you cheap person with WAY too much time on their hands.

I am truly sorry about your unpleasant visit to coinstar. In the near future you decide you would like to use Coinstar, I will help you if you like! I am not sure about this $10 you claim of. Maybe you where thinking about gift cards? Gift cards are free. Also I can assure you that the 8.9% is not much. Maybe you should think about this. How do you make your living? Lets say you are a waiter, your customer had a chicken burger. They happen to get sick with in a few days of eating it, they blame it on your restraint and they want a refund. $4 is nothing to be upset about and on top of that you freaked out to a customer service agent, possibly the reason why they hung up! Put some reason in your life, NOTHING IS FREE!

Yeah I'm NEVER going to a coinstar again. I counted out change to take to a bank. I had $16.06 exactly. The bank was closed by the time I got there and I really needed cash. So I went to a coinstar. They counted only $14.77 and I waited to hear more change fall through.. nothing. So I went ahead and printed the reciept anyway to take to the front. That's when I heard more change fall through. I only got $13 something out of all of it. I got fucking robbed.

Got another Coinstar Rip Off story for you...I loved Coinstar until I realized their little machines have some creative addition going on. I was sorting through my in-laws estate and counted out 49 Susan B Anthony dollars. I had 40 that were 1979 and 9 that were 1980. I know because I was looking for the collector years to make sure I didn't have a collector coin. I went to the Reasor's store in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 15th street and the first thing I did was plunk down the 49 Susan B. Anthony dollars. The CoinStar machine tallied 34...yes 34 of my 49 coins and the machine did not return the rest. Crap...what do I do now.... So the great price of 8.xx% they were supposed to charge me to count my coins turned out to be more like 36%...ouch. Store clerk opened the machine to make sure they hadn't fallen someplace they were supposed to, then they just shrugged their shoulders and said "Sorry". Called Coinstar support...and their response...tell you what..."when we count the coins, if we come up with $15 too much, we'll send you a check." Yeah right...I'm sure I'll see that check. Can you imagine the profit this company is making if they rob everyone at the same rate? Outrageous. Buy stock and hope they don't get caught.

Thanks for these stories. I am in a meijers parking lot as we speak with my coins. I am now not going to turn in the coins. It's Sunday when the bank is closed so I figured I could do it this way. Now I won't. Thank you again

I saved my change all year to help with Xmas I and my wife counted the change twice 300 bucks we took it to local Wal-Mart coinstar machine. We put 300 dollars in and it counted it as 180 bucks. I call coinstar right there in the store they have Wal-Mart run a test on machine by putting 3 pennies in it. It only counted one. Coinstar said they seen error was I was adding coins to machine and that when they counted machine in two weeks they would contact me. Well 2 weeks later I got the phone call they say machine was only 17 bucks short and they would give me half of that. These machines are rip offs.

I saved my change all year to help with Xmas I and my wife counted the change twice 300 bucks we took it to local Wal-Mart coinstar machine. We put 300 dollars in and it counted it as 180 bucks. I call coinstar right there in the store they have Wal-Mart run a test on machine by putting 3 pennies in it. It only counted one. Coinstar said they seen error was I was adding coins to machine and that when they counted machine in two weeks they would contact me. Well 2 weeks later I got the phone call they say machine was only 17 bucks short and they would give me half of that. These machines are rip offs.

About Me

Hey everybody.. welcome to my hounding blog.. I'm just a girl who lives in the Chicago Northwest Suburbs (Carpentersville) I have other blogs over at the book I should write as well as on MYSPACE I was doing really well on Weight Watchers and working out for 3 years. I have a website of that too! Losing my ARSE in the battle